the luz bone

From David Grossman, Be My Knife


Listen, though — I once read that Our Sages of Blessed Memory had the idea that we have one tiny bone in the body, above the end of the spine — they call it the "Luz." You can't kill it, it doesn't crumble after death and can't be destroyed by fire. It is from this that we will be recreated at the Resurrection. I used to play a little game with myself — I would try to guess the Luz of the people I knew, divine the final thing that would be left of them, that indestructible thing from which they'll be reborn. And, of course, I searched for my own Luz as well, but nothing within me met all the necessary conditions. So I stopped asking and looking, I gave my Luz up for lost, until I saw you in the playground. All of a sudden that forgotten thought arose from the dead, and along with it the sweet and crazy notion came to me that maybe my Luz isn't in me after all, but in someone else.